From Reisman to Handrahan: Child Porn Cover-Ups at American University

The elite pedophiles at AU and the sex industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill preferred those dots be kept separate. Reisman got initial approval from DOJ and was hired by AU below the radar of AU President Berendzen and Congress, who were on Christmas vacation.

However, once back from break, the commercial sex industry and their friends at Congress and AU got to work destroying Reisman’s research. They fired up their academic propaganda machine at the Kinsey Institute. They put slandering articles in all major newspapers, including the Eagle, before Reisman even uttered a word. A congressional investigation was led by “Congressman Ike Andrews’ aide, Gordon Raley, who later wrote for Penthouse magazine.” Reisman testified, “Present in the content of all three magazines is a documentable evolution of children portrayed as viable sex targets.” AU President Berendzen was at the hearing but could not look Reisman in the eyes.

Three months before Reisman’s study was due to the Department of Justice in 1985, AU administrators locked Reisman out of her files and insisted on finishing the report for her. Motivation for these actions became clear one year later when the chairman of AU’s department of psychology, Dr. Elliot McGinnies, a key foe of Reisman’s child pornography research was arrested for sex crimes against a 9-year-old-girl on four occasions… and even clearer still when 4 years later AU President Richard Berendzen’s own child-porn crimes cost him his job (temporarily). Berendzen called daycares, proposing sex with their children, and insisting that he kept a “4-year-old Filipino girl as a ‘sex slave’ in a basement dog cage.” 

Fast-forward 30 years to 2012 when Professor Dr. Lori Handrahan published an article in Forbes called, “To Catch Government Workers With Ties to Child Porn, Call the IRS.” The piece details systematic trafficking rings in the Northeastern U.S. and the corrupt officials that facilitate them, revealing that the one bust in Kittery, Maine was clearly just the tip of the iceberg of Maine’s child trafficking problem. The article got 20k hits in a week and was posted on ‘SIS in the News,’ but when the AU pedophile elites got word, it was taken off SIS’s media site the next day. The AU President’s office banned AU media offices from pitching for Handrahan when reporters or TV stations called for interviews or articles.

The buzz from her Forbes article prompted Handrahan to write another op-ed, “Enable the Fight Against Child Porn” about two girls in Iowa who were ripped off the street and later found dead. Yahoo re-printed it and Handrahan believes it is the best piece she has ever written. It was not allowed on ‘SIS in the News’ either. (You can see everything else she published except the two pieces on tackling the child porn problem.) Handrahan emailed Goldgeier, “Is it only my work on child porn / trafficking that will not be posted?” His response, “No problems posting the Syria pieces.” Clearly, there was a specific problem with posting child porn / trafficking articles.

Child porn at the elite level is a pervasive problem and there is a sickening trend of academic pedophiles. (Also see: brief Google search). Birds of a feather fly together and criminals hire those below them who will keep their secrets. Both McGinnies and Berendzen (cured after just three weeks at Johns Hopkins) are still on AU’s faculty today. Shocking but unsurprisingly, top AU administrators in the Board of Trustees and/or the President’s office are still corrupt today, as brazenly displayed by Handrahan’s unjust firing for, like Reisman, researching child porn.

One month later, and one week before classes started in January 2013, Handrahan unexpectedly received a dismissal email from Goldgeier. The powers above him smashed Goldgeier’s moral commitment to protect academic freedom. The AU pedophiles decided, probably with financial incentive from their friend Michael Waxman, that Handrahan was becoming too credible and annoying now that she was trying to fend off Waxman’s stalking. They silenced her research and fired her. Are you against enabling the fight against child porn? AU is.

In 1984, AU’s School of Education Dean, Myra Sadker, said, “I feel very confident that Dr. Reisman’s research is well conceptualized and developed.” Although Sadker personally backed Reisman, just like Goldgeier personally backed Handrahan, pressure from AU administration broke Sadker and Goldgeier like twigs. In 1985, Sadker told Reisman that AU was taking over her project. Unlike Goldgeier though, Sadker displayed moral courage and resigned, citing distaste in how AU handled Reisman’s research.

Reisman wrote, “The reasons for AU’s efforts to stop my investigation of child sex abuse in mainstream pornography were glaringly obvious, even to the most naïve observer.” The taking down of Handrahan’s article on fighting child porn from “SIS in the News” is just as glaringly obvious.

When this kind of research is so publically destroyed, what message does that send to current and future students about the mission that AU was founded upon? Handrahan’s behavior in the classroom that Goldgeier said he wanted to duplicate was her leadership by example and her ability to teach students how to have moral courage. Handrahan explains, “The biggest problem with my firing is that it sent a message to all the students at SIS: ‘Even though we are telling you guys to go out on the front lines in the world and promote moral courage, we are not going to promote it here on campus.’” Every one of her students clearly got that message.

Reisman’s biggest disappointment is not getting the opportunity to teach and influence young people. For someone who speaks truth to power as compellingly as she does (see the Introduction to her book), Reisman’s absence was detrimental to students and for major legal decisions about pornography as a social toxin and its especial harm to children, but now her voice is heard. This is the first time Reisman’s story is being told at AU because the Eagle unsurprisingly obeyed the hand that feeds them. With Handrahan, the Eagle proved once again to be a mouthpiece of the elite by not publishing a word on Handrahan. Perhaps the Eagle’s recent award most suitably characterizes its dog-and-pony show: “best all-around non-daily student newspaper.” No hard feelings, you were only an accomplice in two child porn cover-ups. Mull it over this summer and reply in the fall, we’ll wait.